


You bring the colour to my weary world

by schweet_heart



Series: Merlin Fic [75]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Character Death, Established Relationship, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Future Fic, Immortal Merlin, M/M, Mutual Pining, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Post-Canon Fix-It, Resurrection, Soul Bond, remix eligible
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-14
Updated: 2017-09-14
Packaged: 2018-12-29 18:20:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12090735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schweet_heart/pseuds/schweet_heart
Summary: The day Arthur returns is the day Merlin sees the sunrise for the first time in over a thousand years.





	You bring the colour to my weary world

 

The day Arthur returns is the day Merlin sees the sunrise for the first time in over a thousand years. Not that he hasn’t been awake at dawn before, of course, but the world is different in black and white, and he's never really seen the point in lingering over the things that used to delight him, not once all the colour had gone out of the world. 

 

Today, however, is different, something he knows from the moment he opens his eyes to find everything suddenly and sharply back in focus, the sky a pale eggshell blue and drenched with light. He sits up, wincing a little at the assault on his eyes, and it takes a second before his half-asleep mind catches up with what his senses are already telling him. Arthur is back. It’s the only reason he can think of why everything should suddenly be this bright, why there should now be pink and gold and green in the world again, why his magic is filling him in a way it hasn’t done in years, singing through every vein and sinew.

 

Arthur is back.

 

For a moment, Merlin just sits there, overwhelmed by the thought of it. He can feel everything around him in minute detail. The faint frost of dew on the grass. The wind in the trees. The ripples of the lake against the shore and the tiny, worried thoughts of the fish deep in its shadowy depths. It’s as if he, too, has awakened after a long sleep, and the flood of awareness is intoxicating. Then, when the full breadth of the revelation finally hits him, he’s scrambling to his feet of a sudden and staring out over the lake, breathless, shading his eyes against the morning glare and straining to catch a glimpse of him. Arthur. The man he’s waited all this time for.

 

He should have known, of course, that it wasn’t going to be that easy. There’s no sign of Arthur, no sign of anyone, in fact, except for his own shadow in the surface of the water. The cold has seeped into his too-old bones and made the joints ache, and he is once again reminded of why he hates sleeping out of doors in the spring. But it had been such a clear night last night, and he hadn’t had the heart to put up his tent and close out the stars. They seemed to get further and further away with every year. 

 

Finally, Merlin resorts to shouting and searching, thinking that if Arthur were back then he couldn't have gone far, not on foot in a strange century.

 

As usual, he has everything backwards. He’s been at it for hours, the sun just off full noon, when Arthur finds him, sitting morosely atop a small hillock to rest and glaring at the monument of Avalon in the distance as if it has done this on purpose. He wouldn’t put it past the Fair Folk to have a laugh at his expense, but surely even they wouldn’t be so cruel.

 

“Excuse me,” says an unmistakeable voice, right behind him, and Merlin turns so fast he almost overbalances and falls into the water. The hand that catches his arm is strong and firm, and achingly familiar. “I’m looking for someone. I think. Er. Skinny bloke, about yea high, big ears? Have you seen him?”

 

Merlin wants to say, “What?” and “Are you having me on?” but all he can do is gape, his mouth open and slack-jawed, feeling like he’s been punched in the stomach and all the air is rushing out of his lungs. Arthur — because it is Arthur, couldn’t be anyone else _but_ Arthur — shoots him an odd look, one that Merlin knows of old to mean _are you all right?_ with more than a little _are you daft?_ thrown in. 

 

“Sorry, did I startle you?” he asks, perfectly polite. Merlin forces himself to shut his mouth; it closes with an audible click, and he swallows. 

 

“Just a bit,” he says, when he can breathe. His heart is doing somersaults in his chest, battering against his ribcage as if determined to fling itself bodily at Arthur, even if it has to tear him open to do it. Arthur looks the _same_ , identical down to the puzzled expression and the tousled blond hair lit gold by the sun, except for the fact that he’s wearing jeans and a hoodie, deep red with the arms rolled up, and maybe it’s because this is the _last_ way he expected their reunion to go but Merlin finds himself ridiculously close to tears. He closes his eyes briefly and takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry, you said you were looking for someone?”

 

“Yes,” Arthur says, but he’s distracted now, peering into Merlin’s face with a frown. “Look, never mind that, do I know you?”

 

Merlin goes perfectly still, torn between impossible hope and sudden panic. It’s been over a thousand years, and he looks like an old man, the same old man who had killed Arthur’s father. How much does Arthur even remember? If he’d only thought about it earlier he could have magicked away the glamour, but now — what if Arthur puts two and two together? To have him back after all this time, only for Arthur to _hate_ him…it couldn’t be borne.

 

“No,” he says, his voice coming out all wrong. Arthur takes a step closer, searching his face.

 

“Those eyes,” he says, almost to himself. “And if your beard were longer…and you were wearing a robe…”

 

Comprehension crosses his face like a lightning bolt, and Merlin flinches, knowing —

 

“ _You_ were Dragoon the Great!?” Arthur exclaims, something like hurt crossing his face for a split second before rage takes over. “You called me all kinds of names — you made me give you a _piggy back ride!_ ”

 

“Um,” Merlin says, because really, that’s not even the worst of it. “Sorry?”

 

“It is you, isn’t it?” Arthur says. “My god, how could I have been so— so utterly blind? You must have been laughing at me the whole time, the way I just kept…” And then his face changes again, and Merlin knows he’s made the connection, that it’s finally hit home. “You killed my father.”

 

Merlin can’t help wincing, hunching his shoulders a little to protect himself. But Arthur doesn’t seem angry or betrayed or anything really. He’s just looking at Merlin, a thousand expressions and none at all going through his eyes. He runs a hand through his hair, rumpling it still more, and looks out across the lake before plumping down on the grass and gesturing for Merlin to sit beside him.

 

“We need to talk, you and I,” he says.

 

“Yeah,” Merlin says, and it comes out croaky. The grass under his fingers as he sits is smooth and cool, still damp with the morning’s frost as it melts. He plucks at a half-opened daisy with his fingers, watches as the age spots fade from his hands, the wrinkles smoothing out as the accumulation of years falls away. He can feel Arthur looking at him.

 

“It _is_ you,” he says again, like maybe he wasn’t quite sure until that moment. Then: “I’ve been colourblind all my life, until this morning.”

 

“Twenty-odd years, give or take,” Merlin says, flippant. “I’ve been colourblind for a _millennium_.”

 

“ _Mer_ lin,” —and Merlin shivers at his name in that voice— “it’s not a competition.”

 

“If it were, I would win. Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for you?”

 

He’s horrified to hear his voice waver and break, on the edge of hysteria. He’s had so long to imagine this, to spin out all the possible avenues in his head, until he almost felt like he knew for sure what Arthur would say and how he would act and how it would feel to see him again. The reality is nothing like any of the things he’d pictured. He’s trembling a little, and he can’t look Arthur in the face, can’t let himself _feel_ that much after all this time, so instead he focuses on the particular colour of green that grass is — the blue of the sky and the water. He can hear the sounds of Arthur’s soft breath beside him, and _god_ , it’s already too much and not enough and it hurts, like being too close to a naked flame. 

 

“Merlin,” Arthur says, softly.

 

“I can’t,” Merlin blurts, glancing over at him and then away, his shoulders still hunched and his heart like a hummingbird caught in his ribs. “I can’t, Arthur, I— "

 

He hears Arthur draw in a short breath, then exhale slow. He stops talking. The water below ripples in a chill wind, and Merlin wonders when he grew so thin that even the gentlest breeze could cut right through him. He thinks perhaps that’s what living for too long does; it wears you down, scrapes out the centre until all that is left is skin and bone.

 

“I waited for you too, you know,” Arthur says, finally. “When— that day— I was gone, but I wasn’t _gone_ gone. I know how much it hurt you to say goodbye.”

 

He hesitates, but Merlin doesn’t say anything, so he goes on.

 

“I thought when I came back it would be the same, that I’d be me again, but I was _born_ , Merlin, I don’t think I even had an inkling of who I was until I was five and even then, even then my first conscious memory, the first thing I _knew_ about Camelot was you. It was always you. And I thought, surely, if I’m here, Merlin must be somewhere nearby. Except I was five years old, what could I do? Most of the adults thought I was nuts. My _parents_ thought I was nuts. I went through so many psychiatrists before I learned that it was better not to tell anyone I was a king in another life.”

 

Finally, Merlin stirs. “You were here all the time?”

 

“Islington, actually.”

 

So close. And yet— 

 

“Why didn’t I sense you? Why couldn’t either of us _see_?”

 

Arthur shrugs. Merlin can’t see it, but he can feel it, a displacement of air, all of his senses so acutely attuned to Arthur’s body even after all this time. 

 

“Maybe we had to meet again for the colours to kick in,” Arthur says. “Or maybe it wasn’t time yet. I don’t know. It’s not as if anyone really knows how this works.”

 

“I just,” Merlin starts, but of course it’s pointless, saying it out loud. Arthur already knows. He gives up and shrugs helplessly, bending to bury his face against his knees, to just _breathe,_ closing his eyes against the emotional onslaught that threatens to overwhelm him.

 

A moment later, there’s a tentative touch on his back, running the length of his curved spine, gentle and familiar. Merlin gives a full-bodied shiver, breathes in a sob, then turns blindly towards the king’s embrace. Arthur’s arms come around him and gather him close, and then it's Arthur murmuring nonsense into Merlin’s hair, stroking his shoulders, his arms, his nape and back.

 

“I’m here,” Arthur says into Merlin’s neck. “It’s all right, I’m here.”

 

Merlin is ashamed to admit, later, that he more or less clings to Arthur for a time, unable to do anything beyond hold onto him and absorb the reality of his existence. He smells the way he always has, of sweat and leather and iron, and his body is solid and warm in Merlin’s grip, firm but yielding under his questing hands.

 

Eventually, Arthur’s hands move lower, dipping down over Merlin’s ass, and Merlin shifts closer, straddling Arthur’s lap in a way that brings their lower bodies flush together. 

 

“I’ve missed you,” Merlin whispers, drawing back a little to look into Arthur’s face. His eyes trace the familiar features, Arthur’s golden hair and slightly crooked smile. 

 

“And I you,” Arthur says, the smile broadening. He nudges Merlin’s forehead with his own. “Bad help is hard to find in this day and age. The peasants have developed these quaint ideas of _independence_ and _equality_.”

 

Merlin laughs a little. “Don’t tell me you’ve been making your own bed and doing your own laundry, sire.”

 

“ _And_ cooking my own meals.” Arthur widens his eyes dramatically. “It’s been simply horrible without you, you know.”

 

It is quite impossible, then, for Merlin not to kiss him, so he does, with enough force that Arthur catches hold of his waist for balance, his large hands bracketing Merlin’s hips, his whole body surging up into the kiss as if it’s the one thing he’s been waiting for his entire life. Merlin nips hungrily at his lower lip then licks his way into Arthur’s mouth, and Arthur opens for him eagerly, his fingers fumbling at Merlin’s belt, untucking his shirt to find bare skin.

 

“Horrible,” Arthur mutters, breaking away to kiss down Merlin’s neck to his clavicle, sucking marks into his collarbone. “I had to learn about _washing powder_ and _scrambled eggs_ , Merlin. I learned how to _drive_.”

 

“I apologise, Your Majesty,” Merlin retorts breathlessly in response, tipping his head back to give Arthur better access and burying his hands in the king’s hair. “Next time I’ll make certain you have a servant waiting for you when you’re reborn as a random infant whose surname and location I have no possible way of knowing, given that I am not a seer and the last dragon died over a millennium ago.”

 

“Not going to be a next time,” Arthur says fiercely, shucking Merlin’s t-shirt over his head and hauling him closer still. “You’re mine, and I’m _staying_ with you, damn it. Destiny can go fuck itself.”

 

Merlin kisses him again, open-mouthed and messy with want, and Arthur groans deep in his chest. 

 

“Shirt,” Merlin says, because it looks like they are actually going to do this. Arthur raises his arms obediently, spoiling the move somewhat when he wont stop kissing Merlin long enough for him to get the thing off over his head. Eventually Merlin manages it; discards the hoodie and t-shirt with his own top and traces his fingers down Arthur’s broad chest. The king catches his wrists, bringing Merlin’s palms up to his lips and kissing them. Merlin makes a small, shattered sound.

 

“We’re legends, you know,” Arthur says, soft. His fingers trace the skin at Merlin’s wrists, around and over the fine bones and back again. “They tell stories about us. All wrong, of course.”

 

“I know,” Merlin says.

 

“How surprised do you think they’d be,” Arthur murmurs, leaning in to kiss Merlin again, his mouth, his neck. “If they knew you were my useless manservant as well as my soulmate? If they knew I was head over heels in love with you?”

 

“Pretty surprised,” Merlin says. “Considering I didn’t know that until about two seconds ago.”

 

Arthur blinks at him, confused, and Merlin wishes he could take back what he said, because Arthur doesn’t need to deal with his insecurities after all this time. The sun on Arthur’s skin turns it golden, and although it’s a little chilly here near the water Merlin finds he doesn’t care if it makes Arthur’s nipples pebble like that, if it makes Arthur crowd close to him almost unconsciously, seeking warmth as well as giving it. 

 

“You didn’t know? Merlin, I realise you’re not exactly the brightest bulb in the box— ”

 

“Hey!”

 

“ —but I’d have thought even you would realise how I felt when I _unified the kingdom_ for you. We’re _soul mates_ , for crying out loud.”

 

“Yes, but,” Merlin says, feeling a little silly but needing to say it anyway. “But you never said. Just because we’re soul mates doesn’t mean we have to be lovers. You know that.”

 

“Yes, it does,” Arthur says, and Merlin is taken aback by the conviction in his voice. His hands tighten on Merlin’s arms. “For us it does. All right? I love you.”

 

Merlin can feel himself flush, his heart giving a jump in his chest, although there’s still a niggling doubt in his stomach, a feeling that Arthur would never have said those words out loud if Merlin hadn’t pushed him to it. It is, after all, ridiculously surreal, to be sitting here by the lake where he has waited for so long, with Arthur in his arms making stupidly obvious and grand and unthinkable declarations as if they’re nothing, both of them bare-chested, and Arthur wearing _jeans_ , for Christ’s sake. He swallows back the tears that threaten to fall and tries to summon a convincing smile.

 

“And I love you, too.”

 

Arthur’s mouth quirks in a grin. “That doesn’t mean you’re getting out of that talk,” he says, attempting to sound stern. “But right now I just want— I’d much rather— ”

 

“Yeah,” Merlin says, cutting him off with another kiss and bearing him back against the cool grass. Now is not the time for talking, just doing. Arthur seems to agree, because he pulls Merlin down with him, tangling their limbs together, running his hands down Merlin’s sides to the waistband of his trousers.

 

“Off?”

 

“Off,” Merlin confirms, lifting his hips to help out, and together they shed the remainder of their clothing and chuck it aside — not heated or desperate, just determined, and maybe a little bit scared. It’s been so long, Merlin thinks, taking in Arthur’s bared skin, the hard flush of his cock against his belly. And it’s never just been about the sex, with them, it’s been about honesty and communion and mutual devotion; what if the magic’s gone, after all this time?

 

Then Arthur touches him, and all Merlin’s doubts are forgotten. This is the very essence of spring: renewal and rejuvenation. He can feel the power of the earth thrumming in his veins, his own excitement mounting, and when he bends to take the whole hard length of Arthur into his mouth the king makes a strangled sound and arches upwards, his hands fisted in the dirt sending pulses of power through Merlin’s body.

 

After so many years, Merlin wants to draw it out, wants it to last forever and then to start all over again, but of course things never did work like that. Arthur’s hands grip his hair, his shoulders, urging him into a punishing rhythm, and Merlin’s own cock feels taut and hot, his body trembling on the edge of orgasm without needing to be touched. When Arthur stiffens, his hips snapping up as his come fills Merlin’s mouth, it takes only a second before Merlin is coming as well, spending his seed all over the thirsty earth. 

 

For a moment, things are dizzyingly still, a hum like cicadas filling the air, then a flash of bright light engulfs them, blinding them both before vanishing as quickly as it had come, like heat lightning on a summer day. Arthur drags Merlin up to his chest and kisses the taste of himself from Merlin’s mouth, seemingly unperturbed, before asking, “What the hell was that?”

 

“How should I know?” Merlin retorts, panting. “It’s never happened before.”

 

“And just how many naked kings have you ravished by the side of this lake over the years, _Mer_ lin?”

 

Merlin laughs. “Not many,” he says. “They’re rather hard to come by, these days.”

 

“You’ll have to tell me everything,” Arthur says, hooking an arm over Merlin’s shoulders and combing fingers through his dark hair. “How you spent your time. The things you’ve seen. Starting from the beginning, please.”

 

“You first,” Merlin bargains, mostly just for the sake of arguing. Something is different, now, more than just Arthur lying beneath him, more than just the colour that saturates every blink and breath of him. Merlin reaches out a hand to conjure a butterfly, and his magic rushes to obey him in a way it hasn’t done for centuries, sending a whole flock of them fluttering into the air. They circle upwards in a many-winged stream, blue and red and gold, carrying the news of Arthur's return out into the world. 

 

Arthur watches them float with half-hooded eyes. “Me first,” he agrees. And begins.


End file.
